Category Archives: Photography

In this age of diminishing print media sales, blogging has snowballed into an ever increasing alternate source of information. It kind of horrifies me to think that people look to blogs for, like, real journalism. If you want further proof that bloggers just don’t quite cut it as fully legit journalists, consider this: I had every intention of documenting last Friday’s Montu/Rad Shades/Digital Beatdown show in a semi-professional manner. However, when it became clear that I wouldn’t be required to drive that night, all hope of sobriety (and good photography…and totally coherent thinking) gave way to gin & Sprite. And goofy dance movez.

Digital Beatdown got things off to a good start, from what I saw, but I have to admit that I was preoccupied with getting my order taken at the bar. And my other order. Bartenders rarely recognize my beauty and always seem to take orders from girls in short skirts first. Whatever.

Montu actually played two sets, broken up by an intermission patrolled by Rad Shade’s beat dropping. Brother’s is not a huge venue, but every spare inch of space was filled with sweaty, grooving collegiate body parts. Montu’s dexterous, intricate instrumental fusion seemed even more on-point than the last time I saw them. My friend Colby Cowart happens to be their drummer, so maybe I’m not completely without bias, but this is a group well deserving of bigger and better things in the near future. They already appear to have quite a local following, and for very legit reasons.

Rad Shades is the DJing duo Miles Compton and Will Krause, two other friends of mine. Before the show they warned me that they had thrown the night’s mix together about an hour prior, but to my ears (and my shaking drunk ass), it was a tightly performed set. The crowd was completely won over by their charismatic presence and solid mixing abilities. Even when Will’s laptop crashed to the floor with an Apple-smashing thud, momentum was quickly regained (and said computer seemed to recover from the tumble).

Fortunately, our friend (and expert artist/photographer) Zay Shaeffer was there to pick up the visual slack, capturing some dope shots for you cats.

After several months of neglecting his genius way around a pop hook, The First Baptist Praise and Warship Band picked up his guitar, settled on four(!!!-branching out) chords, made some lyrics up on the spot, and pressed record. This is the astounding result: